


Bullet Hell

by dragonashes



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Military, Sensory Deprivation, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-01-07 03:29:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12224814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonashes/pseuds/dragonashes
Summary: The outpost of Haven stands as the front-line defense against the infected creatures that inhabit Ebott Forest.  There, humans and monsters fight side by side for not only their own survival, but for what little remains of civilization.Frisk has risen from a street urchin barely scraping by to the best sniper in town.  She's survived danger and loss that would have broken a lesser person.  Her new partner, though, might just push her over the edge...if she doesn't strangle him first.A series of related one-shots.





	1. Resolve

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for stopping by!
> 
> This will be a story told in one-shots. They will be sequential, but won't have smooth transitions like a proper story...and updates may be interspersed with other things I post. The tags will update if I add something not covered by the current tags.
> 
> Please be advised that this does involve people fighting for survival, so expect mentions of violence, character death, a bit of naughty language, and other Very Real Issues. You are responsible for the content you consume. If you are concerned about whether a certain type of content is included, feel free to ask.
> 
> With that out of the way, on to the story!

Frisk braced herself and fired at the shadowy figure looming towards her, grinning when she was rewarded with a screech of pain and rage.  She’d been out all night and her head was spinning from exhaustion, but she was still the best gunner in Haven.

A second shot - the last one in in her magazine - finished off the poor creature.   “Sans, I’m out!”

There was no response.

Stars.  The lazy asshole had run off on her again, hadn’t he.  She scanned her surroundings.  It looked like that was the last of the pack she’d been hunting anyways.  Frisk set up her recon beacon - a patched-together bundle of cameras and sensors - to alert her if anything tried to sneak up on her post, then shouldered her rifle and set off to look for her spotter.

_ He’s a valuable asset, _ they’d said.   _ He’ll be good for you, _ they’d said.  Filthy liars, every last one.

And...okay, it wasn’t Haven Command’s fault that Sans was the laziest person in the settlement.  If she hadn’t been paired off with him, she would’ve even approved; she could appreciate a guy who knew the value of a good nap.  Just...not when it interfered with her work.

She lifted the branches that helped camouflage of their temporary encampment and looked around.  No Sans.  That narrowed things down, at least; if he hadn’t come back to camp, there was only one other place he could be.  She opened her mobile locator and set off into the surrounding forest.

How Sans had managed to get into the Ebott Forest Patrol was anyone’s guess.  Frisk herself had gone through a pretty rigorous physical and psychological evaluation before she was allowed outside Haven’s walls, but that had been a few years back.  Maybe the top brass was getting soft.  Maybe he’d bought his way in.  It didn’t matter.

What mattered was that he openly and blatantly didn’t give a damn about the Patrol or it’s mission.  He didn’t care about eliminating the mutated creatures that threatened both the local wildlife and the citizens of Haven, didn’t care about hunting for food, didn’t care about the infection that spread through the forest a little more every day.  No; Sans cared about one thing and one thing only: his younger brother.

It was pretty sweet of him, she had to (grudgingly) admit.  He’d gone through all the effort of not only getting himself added to the Patrol’s roster, but also put on the same squad as his brother.  And he’d done it in a way no one could argue with.  Frisk  _ needed _ a spotter who could see in the dark to be effective on night routes, and Sans fit all her requirements perfectly.

_ Too _ perfectly, in fact.  She had to hand it to him: he’d done his homework very well.

As she approached the site indicated by her locator, Frisk announced herself with her callsign tapped out in code against the barrel of her shotgun.  A tense moment of silence passed, then she got a response from just ahead.  She hoisted herself onto a low-hanging branch and was greeted by her squadmate, Tricia, and Tricia’s very much not-absent partner.

“Slacking off?”  Tricia grinned.

Frisk tried to twist her face into a pleasant expression in exchange.  Tricia was a veteran of the night team, and Frisk had a lot of respect for her, but it was annoying to always be lumped in with Sans.  Frisk was a  _ very _ good gunner in her own right, with the best shot-to-kill ratio of anyone in Haven.  She’d wanted to make a good impression on her new squadmate.

Three missions in, and Sans had thoroughly put a kibosh on all of that.

“Looking for my spotter,” Frisk grumbled.  She turned to Tricia’s partner.  “Papyrus, have you seen your brother?”

Papyrus vibrated with some strong emotion - excitement, perhaps, or worry.  *No,* he signed, a little clumsily.  *He was here earlier, but he left.*

“How long ago?”

The tall skeleton shrugged.  He was coming along very well with sign language - his voice carried much too far for anything resembling stealth - but it was still a work in progress.

His partner thought for a moment.  “I’d say...about half an hour?  Did you check back at camp?”

“I did.  He’s gone MIA on me.  Again.”

“Aww, honey, he’ll show up.  Night patrol gets to everyone sooner or later.  It’s quiet out; I wouldn’t get too worried.”

“Right.  Well.  I’d better get back.  My beacon’s still on the fritz and I don’t really trust it.  Maintenance keeps delaying my repair request.”  Possibly because Sans kept pranking them.

“Alright.”  Tricia took a sip of water from her flask and resettled herself on her branch.  “You wanna use mine?”

“Nah, it’s fine.  I’ll do a quick eyeball search on my way back to my post.”

Tricia and Papyrus waved her off, and she set back out.

The night  _ was _ quiet, as Tricia had said.  It was eerie.  Frisk, used to daytime patrols, hadn’t quite adjusted to how still things could get.  On the one hand, fewer non-mutated animals were out at night, so differentiating between the infected and the normal was easier; on the other, being human was a distinct disadvantage in the dark.

Which was why she was  _ supposed _ to be with her  _ spotter. _  The guy who actually could  _ see. _

“Why,” she grumbled under her breath as she settled back into her post, “of all the gunners in Haven, did he  _ have _ to be paired with-”

And everything went  _ blank. _

She awoke to the uncomfortable sensation of being dragged by her foot.  It took her a moment - and a few unpleasant bumps to her throbbing head - to recover, but when she did, she almost wished she’d remained unconscious.

The enormous dark shape of some kind of dog-like creature was towing her through the forest like a sack of meat.  She tried to remain still, but some of her panic must have alerted it; it glanced at her for a moment, eyeing her thoughtfully, before giving her a rough shake that rattled her teeth.  She lay limp.

Satisfied, the beast started dragging her again.

Frisk carefully took stock of herself.  Her headache was receding, slowly, but she could still feel the strange static that came from the aftermath of a psychic attack.

Shit.   _ Shit. _  The area had been cleared of psionics  _ weeks _ ago; it had been one of Frisk’s last missions with the daylight crew, in fact.  She pushed that thought away.  That was in the past; it was behind her now.

A realization struck her, threatening her composure.  There was a sharp pain in her ankle near where the creature’s claws were wrapped around her boot.  She tried to catch a glimpse of it, but the dark, heavy, standard-issue pants barely showed blood.  There was no way to tell if it was a scratch or something...worse.

On the upside, it was unlikely to matter.  This thing hadn’t eaten her outright, so either it was dragging back to a den to wait for her to convert into a mindless thrall, or…

...or it had a nest.

A nest meant babies.  Babies meant a growing population.  A growing population of psionics this close to Haven meant danger not just to the local environment, but to every man, woman and child in the settlement.

She breathed as deeply as she could, upside down as she was.  More than 50% of the Patrol eventually fell prey to the creatures they fought.  She knew that better than most, but it wasn’t the time to dwell on that.  The point was, she’d always known how her life would probably end.

Frisk was a member of the Ebott Forest Patrol.  She had sworn on her life to protect and defend the citizens of Haven from the dangers the forest held.  She knew she couldn’t defeat this beast - she was a small woman, no amount of training could change that - but she could do her best to take as many of its children down with her.

Assuming it had children, of course.  The whole infected-thrall thing was still an option, especially if it  _ had _ bitten her.

After an interminable amount of time the creature suddenly dropped, dragging Frisk with it.  She gritted her teeth against the pain of falling a good five feet into the entrance of what appeared to be a massive cave dug into the packed dirt.

Thankfully, the creature had dropped her leg during the fall.  For one moment she considered trying to get away; it wasn’t paying attention to her, and she wasn’t  _ that _ far from her campsite…

But then, she noticed the nest.

Probably a dozen eyeless pink monstrosities, each as long as her forearm, wriggled among a mess of tattered fur and cloth.  Her stomach clenched in revulsion; some of the cloth looked like the kind she had worn nearly every day for years, the durable material that comprised the uniforms of the Patrol.  How long had this thing been around?  How many people had it hunted down?

Well, there was no going back now.  She  _ had _ to put a stop to it, or die trying.

(She acknowledged, deep in some calm and quiet part of her mind, that she was  _ definitely _ going to die trying.)

Now, at the end of her life, she felt a few regrets.  She wished she had been nicer to a few people.  She wished she had taken Sans up on his offer of going out to dinner the night before they left.  She wished she hadn’t snuck that toad into Tricia’s bedroll on her way back through camp.  She wished...

Oh, well.

She breathed deeply and evenly, letting her training take over.  Her strength was nothing against the beast that had dragged her in, even if she’d been in top condition; she had to find another way.  She quickly took inventory of what she had on her.  Her locator had been lost in whatever psychic attack that had knocked her unconscious back at her post, which was expected but unfortunate; she needed some way to signal her comrades of the danger in case she wasn’t able to finish the job.

Her fingers closed on a flare.  That, she decided, would do quite nicely.

Her machete was still strapped to her leg, surprisingly enough.  She could feel the telltale pressure of her boot knives as well.  That gave her three weapons against a dozen or so baby critters.

Actually…

She slowly moved her hand around the side of her belt, praying.  Yeah, that would work.  It would hurt like hell without a gas mask, but maybe - just maybe - she could pull this off.

The largest of the creatures turned back towards her when she dropped the hissing flare, remembering its quarry, and Frisk knew her time was up.  Without hesitation, she pulled the pin on the gas canister she held and threw it at the nest.

The pain was almost instantaneous.  Tear gas this strong wasn’t meant for humans, or even the natural fauna of the forest; it was meant for the awful, mutated, infected creatures that the Patrol fought desperately to keep in check.  She nearly keeled over in pain as every drop of moisture in her eyes and nose and mouth reacted to the chemicals.

She steeled herself and dove towards the nest.  One gloved hand closed around a soft, hairless body, and she plunged the machete in.  As soon as it went still, she grabbed another and repeated the process.

Again and again and again.  Her gloves were heavy and saturated with ichor, the smell overpowering even with the tear gas in the air.  If she wasn’t so sure she’d be dead in the next few minutes, she would’ve been sick.

She didn’t know how long it took, but eventually she couldn’t find anything moving in the nest.  All the little bodies were limp and quiet.  She could hear the parent creature not too far off, still screaming in pain, but it hadn’t found her yet.  She held her breath, hoping against hope that maybe,  _ maybe _ she could still get out of this alive.

One hand, still sticky from her grim work, felt along the side of the cave.  If she hadn’t gotten too turned around, the exit was-

There was the sound of thrashing, then her hand met a solid wall of muscle and thick, coarse fur.

Her eyes snapped open on instinct.  The tear gas stung like daggers in her eyeballs, but she couldn’t look away.  She could only watch as her death reared up in a mass of angry black, a mindless, corrupted creature roaring a pain and loss it could barely understand.

Then, in slow motion, it collapsed.

Time returned to its normal speed and Frisk was forced to snap her eyes shut again.  She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, but after a moment, she registered the unusual quiet under it.

Sensation returned slowly.  Her eyes, the sensitive lining of her nose, and her mouth all felt like they were being eaten away.  Each breath felt like she was breathing fire as the gas made its way inside her.  Her ears seemed almost oversensitive.  The death grip she had on her machete was making her fingers go numb.  Her head was pulsing, her back and shoulders felt like one giant bruise, and that terrible pain in her leg throbbed.

She heard a crunch from off to her right and spun, knife at the ready.  “S-stay back!” she croaked, nearly choking on her own breath.

Silence reigned once more.  Then-

“frisk, it’s me.”

“What??”

“it’s, uh, sans.”

Another crunch.

“Stay back!!”

“woah, buddy, i’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Prove it’s you!”

There was a pause, then a sigh.  “i, uh, totally forgot my callsign.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

He chuckled, but Frisk  _ still _ felt him moving closer.  She shifted, not sure where she was in the cave, and suppressed the urge to cough.  “Sans, stay away from me.”

“look, i know you don’t like monsters-”

_ What?? _

“-but right now, i’m your best bet at getting back to camp.”

“That’s not it at all.  I don’t...why even...nevermind, it doesn’t matter.  Sans, I’m as good as dead.  You need to leave me behind.  Tell...Tricia that there was...a nest here.  She’ll know...who to talk to about getting...a team out here to...do a sweep.”

She tried to say more, but she could feel her breathing becoming more labored by the moment.

“what?  you don’t mean…”  There was a pause and Frisk could feel his gaze on her, evaluating the way she was standing.  “wait.  no, no, no,  _ no. _  frisk, buddy, were...were you bitten?”

“Think so,” was all she could force out.

“okay.   _ okay. _  let me see.”

“What?  No!”

“frisk-”

She tried to speak, but her throat seemed to be closing up on her.  She tried to move back away from him but she couldn’t make her feet cooperate.  All she could do was drop the knife, still covered in blood, and hope that the skeleton would come to his senses and  _ leave _ before she became a danger to him.

“okay.  here’s the plan.  where are you injured?”

Frisk stuck out her injured leg.  *Above boot,* she signed with clumsy fingers, hoping he knew at least a little bit of sign language.

Apparently, he did.  “right.  i’ll just have a quick look and see what we’re dealing with, and if you aren’t bitten you’re coming with me.  okay?”

She nodded, feeling more helpless than she had all evening.  Sans was a green rookie on his third mission, and a monster to boot.  He wouldn’t know a damn thing about human field medicine.  Tricia would, though.  Maybe if he did drag her back, Frisk could pass on her warning and make sure she was...disposed of safely.

She was  _ not _ going to return to Haven infected.  Not after what happened with-

“well, the good news is that this isn’t a bite.”

“Sure.”

“no, see?  well, i guess not.  but these are clearly claw indents, not tooth marks.  still puts you at risk for infection - especially since you’re covered in that thing’s blood - but you’re not a lost cause yet.”

He sounded strangely confident.  “Okay.”

“now, i’d like to get this cleaned out before we get moving, just in case.  lemme see...you set off tear gas in here, right?”

She nodded.

“then your water’s no good.  i think i have mine...yup, here we go.  hold onto something; this might sting a little.”

Sans was, as it turned out, a master of understatement.  A groan caught in Frisk’s throat, and it took serious effort to keep her leg still and not lash out at the monster who was pouring  _ something _ over her leg.  No amount of pride could keep tears from cascading down her face as she fought for consciousness.

“Not...water,” she gasped out once she regained enough breath.

“yup, i had a bottle of vodka on me.  for good luck and all that.  field guide says it’s a great disinfectant.”

“Sans.”  She had no breath, she was on the verge of passing out, but this felt unbearably important to say.  “I am going.  To kill you.”

He laughed at her like she’d been joking.

“yeah, yeah, let’s get you back to camp, bud.”

The only thing keeping her from making good on her threat was the fact that he could teleport, and Frisk knew with absolute certainty that she would never make it back to the campsite alone.

Sure enough, three steps later she felt a wash of warmth from a campfire.

Tricia had beaten them back, it seemed.  “Hey!  You’re b...Frisk?”

“Hey,” Frisk croaked out.

“found her almost a mile away, near 2736.  she was in a den.  there was a nest of a-165’s: a dominant male and thirteen cubs.  frisk took out the cubs and i got the male, but that leaves us at least two females unaccounted for, from the size of the litter.”

“Alright.  Thank you, Sans.  Is she…?”

“she’s got a bad scratch on her ankle, but she’ll live.  for now.  i need you to radio it in.”

“Okay.  Papyrus-”

“tricia,  _ you _ need to radio it in.  you have seniority and there’s no time to deal with the chain of command.  we need to get a team out here to scan the area asap.  frisk dropped a flare; if they can get a scout drone out to 2736 in the next couple of hours it should be easy to spot.  careful, though; she used her lachrymator canister as well.”

“Alright.”

It was strange, hearing the confident woman taking orders from  _ Sans _ of all people, but Frisk could hear Tricia move into one of the shelters set up at the campsite.

“paps, help her get to a cot.  i’ve gotta get some water to flush out as much as we can.”

There was a shift as Frisk felt herself being handed off to a larger, more steady pair of arms, then she was moving again.

“I hope you are alright,” Papyrus whispered.  It was unnaturally loud for a whisper, but at least he was trying.

*Fine,* Frisk signed.

There was a bit of shuffling, and it took her a moment to realize that Papyrus was signing to her.

*Can’t see,* she replied with a grimace.

“Oh, sorry,” he whispered again.

There was a bit of finagling around the door, then Frisk was lowered onto one of the cots in the cabin she and Sans had been assigned to.  The other skeleton made himself known a few moments later, pressing a water bottle into her hand.

“drink this,” he said, urgently.  “we’ve also gotta wash your eyes out and change your clothes.  we’ll have to decontaminate everything you’re wearing overnight, if not longer.”

She did as she was told.  The water felt good on her sore throat, and she could already feel the effects of the tear gas fading.

That, or she was becoming inured to the pain.

“okay.  let’s see.  uh…”

“Here.  Like this.”  Firm, fleshy hands on Frisk’s bruised shoulders made her tense, but she allowed Tricia to maneuver her so she was laying on her side on the cot with her head hanging off the end.  A moment later, water trickled over Frisk’s face.  “See?  We’re getting it off her skin first.  Frisk, blink a little for me - there, see?  Little bits of water are going into her eyes.  It hurts us humans for that to happen, but the more water we get into her eyes the faster the tear gas will fade.

“Now for the other side.”  She rolled Frisk over and repeated the process.  “Now, if Frisk was more coherent and had clean hands, she could have splashed water on her face herself.  This is the best we can do for now.  Feel a little better, kid?”

Frisk nodded.

“Alright.  Let’s get you into some fresh clothes and cleaned up, then you can continue flushing your eyes.”  There was a pause.  “That means  _ out, _ boys.”

The skeletons scrambled out, followed by Tricia’s chuckles.

“Now, lemme help you.”

It was not the first time Frisk had been wiped down and helped into a clean set of clothes while out in the wilderness, but it was still a little embarrassing.  At least she was finally able to get the blood off her.  She was still trying not to think about what she’d done.

“Gosh, kid, that’s a nasty set of scratches.  Did Sans take a look at that?”

“Yeah,” she croaked.  Breathing was starting to get easier, thankfully.

“Doesn’t look infected, at least, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it.  Wait a sec.  That smells like...oh, tell me he didn’t…”

Frisk grimaced.  “Vodka.  For luck.”

Tricia’s chuckles were quiet - probably a trait carried over from so many years on the night watch - but they were genuine.  “Oh, you got a good’un, didn’t you.”

“I.  Will kill you.”

“Psh, you couldn’t kill a fly right now, girlie.  Not without pants, at least.”

Frisk was summarily wrangled into her soft sleep pants, which were rolled up on her right side so Tricia could continue ogling the wounds.  A basin of water was pushed into her hands and she obligingly splashed her face with it.

“Well,” Tricia mused, “They’re deep, but nice and pink.  A touch of healing magic and you should be right as rain.  You got real lucky, kid.”

“Yeah.”

“What the heck happened?”

“Psionic, got me at my post.”  She opened her eyes experimentally, and felt tension bleed out of her shoulders when they tingled instead of burned.  She wiped her face with a towel Tricia offered.  “Woke up being dragged to its den.  Shit.  I knew my beacon was bad.”

“Yeah.”  The older woman grumbled something uncomplimentary about the folks down in Maintenance and their relationships with their collective mothers.  “Sans said you took out a nest of the things?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, girl, remind me never to get into a fight with you.”

Frisk grinned.  Her grin dropped a little when she spotted Sans standing in the doorway, bandages in hand, looking rather stone-faced.

“Well,” Tricia said, patting her a little too firmly on the shoulder, “I’ll leave her in your care.  Paps and I will watch the comms, but be ready for a retrieval around sunrise.  Before, maybe, if they find any more of those things roaming around.”  She gave a jaunty wave and sauntered out of the cabin, taking Frisk’s contaminated gear with her.

Sans approached slowly, then knelt down without a word and began gently spreading ointment on the wounds.  It didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the last thing he’d put on them, so Frisk couldn’t find it in her to complain.  He was being more careful than Frisk herself would have been with her leg, propping up her foot on his own knee so he could bandage the wounds properly.

“Thanks,” she said once he’d finished.

He looked up, surprised.  “uh.  no problem.  it was...kinda my fault, really.”

“It was the beacon that was bad.  That’s my responsibility, not yours.”

“but if you hadn’t been off to look for me, that thing couldn’t have snuck up on you.”

Guy had a point.  “Blame won’t get us anywhere.”

“still.  i’m sorry.  i...i thought i’d been paired with a monster-hater, and...i really thought i didn’t care if you lived or died.”

“Why would you think that?”

“i know, it was wrong-”

“No.  Why did you think I hated monsters?”

“oh.  well, i’ve never seen you around monsters.  you’ve been paired with a human the entire time you’ve been with the patrol, which is unusual to say the least.  and...well, no offense, but you weren’t exactly friendly.”

“Sans, the day we met you greeted me with a whoopee cushion in your hand, then proceeded to sleep through the entirety of our orientation.  I don’t hate you; I just thought you didn’t care about what it is we’re supposed to be doing out here.  I take this job very seriously, and to see you act like it’s a joke…” She shrugged.

“ah.”  He looked up at her, searchingly.  “you can...uh...ask for someone else.  i won’t mind.”

“Cut the crap.  I don’t know how you managed it, but I know you’re here for your brother.”

“o-oh?”

“It’s obvious, man.  It’s the only reason I didn’t ask for a replacement spotter after our first mission.  If nothing else, I trusted that you cared enough about your brother to get  _ him _ out in one piece, and by extension the rest of us.”

He grinned at that.  “well.  you’re not wrong.  still, it’s not fair to  _ you. _  you deserve someone who’s gonna have your back.”

“I’m used to it.”

There was a pause as Sans stood and put the medical supplies back in the first aid kit.  Then, “hey, pal?”

“Uh-huh?”

“what happened to that human?  the one you were partnered with on the day shift?”

“I don’t...you didn’t hear?  It was big news.”

“i don’t exactly get out much.”

“Well.  It happened right around here, actually.  My partner, Chara, well...she and I had known each other our whole lives.  She came from a bad family situation out north somewhere; walked into Haven one day with nothing but a kitchen knife, a locket, and the clothes on her back.  We always said we’d make it into the Patrol, to give back to the place that had given us so much.  We were best friends; we said we’d be squadmates for life.   _ That, _ in case you were wondering, is why I’ve never partnered with a monster.

“She was one of the best spotters in the Patrol, at least by day.  Lots of folks make a big deal out of the fact that I have such a good shooting record, but a lot of that was Chara.  We worked well together.  She had no tact and some bad habits, and I covered for her more than I would ever admit, but she could tell an infected critter from a natural from over a mile away, calculate bullet drop and airspeed, and tell me  _ exactly _ where to shoot.  Her methods were a little...unorthodox, nothing that they’d ever teach in training, but no one could argue with the results.”

“you were on the wall sniper team for a while, right?”

“Yeah.  Some folks think it’s a cushy job, sitting on the walls all day, but it’s really an endurance test.  Chara never was good at sitting still.  It was her idea to apply for transfer to the field teams, and she loved it.  While it lasted, anyways.

“It was a little thing that got her, no bigger than a housecat.  Small enough that the scouts didn’t pick it up.  It was on her before any of us noticed.  I got it off her as quickly as I could, and she  _ said _ she wasn’t bitten, but…”

“she lied?”

“She lied.”  Frisk took a moment to collect herself.  It was all so fresh in her mind, but it felt good to be telling it to another person.  “We found out a week later.  She’d been acting strange.  I could tell; after growing up with her, I knew when she was acting out of character.  I asked,  _ begged  _ her to get an exam.  When she refused, I took my concerns to the higher-ups.  They were...brushed aside.  Chara never was anyone’s definition of  _ normal, _ and I guess folks thought we’d had an argument or something.  They didn’t want to table one of their best pairs because of something so small.

“Then we were doing a sweep through this area, just over in 2735, and she just...snapped.  One minute she was behind me like she always was, and the next her arms were around my neck and she was snapping at my ears.  Lucky for me she’s always been scrawny.  We had a couple big guys on our squad; even as...feral as she was acting, they were able to contain her.

“We got her back to base for eval, but I think all of us knew what had happened.  I got the report back two days before I met you, actually.  It was the bite.  That stupid,  _ stupid _ bite.  It was small enough, and it spread more slowly than most; if she’d reported it, they could’ve at least  _ tried _ to purge the infection.  Instead…”

They sat in silence.  After telling her story, Frisk knew she still hadn’t come to terms with what had happened to her lifelong friend.  She’d been running, transferring to the night squad and getting a new spotter, but she hadn’t made her peace.  “Sorry,” she said.

“huh?  what the heck for?”

“I realized...I’ve kinda been taking things out on you.  You didn’t deserve the way I’ve been treating you, either.  Sorry.”

“pal, you’ve been a heck of a lot fairer to me than i’ve been to you.  stars.  i...never thought...i’m sorry for calling you a monster-hater.”

“Eh, it’s fine.”

“and for leaving you at your post.  i...i nearly got you killed today.  i’m sorry.”

As much as Frisk wanted to tell him to forget it, that it wasn’t his fault, she couldn’t.  Chara had always been the one to hold grudges, and in her absence Frisk found her naturally easygoing nature beginning to harden.  It  _ was _ Sans’s fault, at least in part.  If he hadn’t left, he would’ve seen the creature trying to sneak up on them.  That was his whole job.

So no, she couldn’t dismiss it the way she would have once, but she could do one better.  “I forgive you,” she said.  “Do you forgive me?”

“uh...yeah, sure, of course.”

She held out a hand.  “Partners?”

“friends,” he responded.  He had a good grip.

She could appreciate that in a friend.

“Well, I’m going to bed.”

“good, good.  i’ll let you know when evac arrives.”

“Cool.  And Sans?”

“yeah?”

“Maybe someday you can tell me how you know so much about these mutants.”

Frisk had the distinct pleasure of seeing a skeleton gulp nervously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *jazzhands*
> 
> And there we go! I hope you enjoyed the introduction to my little story.
> 
> In case no one caught on:  
> \- Frisk's view of Sans is largely colored by the loss of her former partner, Chara. Change is hard, folks.  
> \- Sans doesn't put forward the effort for people he doesn't care about. His offer of dinner that Frisk mentions was supposed to be a peace offering, and when she turned it down...he made his own (incorrect) assumptions.  
> \- Tear gas is awful, and I'm not really doing it justice.  
> \- Sans slept through field medicine 101. But hey, he read (part of) the first aid guide he was given.
> 
> I did a lot of research on sniper teams for this story. I'm probably on some government watch list. In summary, they work in pairs: one sniper (who shoots a highly specialized rifle optimized for long range) and a spotter (who tells him where to shoot). The spotter's job is to calculate all the little factors that go into a shot, like how gravity and wind and the curvature of the Earth affect a bullet, and have the sniper adjust accordingly. This requires extremely accurate guesses and complex math on the fly. The longest ever recorded kill shot by a sniper was from 3,540m away (about 2.2 miles) by a Canadian solder, Corporal Craig Harrison, in 2017.
> 
> Sniper teams are experts at camouflage and stealth, allowing them to deploy behind enemy lines and take out critical targets. In addition to the actual sniper team, there are often support troops who travel with them just in case someone does sneak up on them. The guns are interesting, too: many sniper rifles are custom jobs, either by the snipers themselves or - more typically - mechanics who are very good at highly precise work.
> 
> In terms of this story, we have one very determined sniper who won't let anything keep her down...and a lazy skeleton who's pretty good at math serving as her spotter. They are fighting creatures driven by base instinct that really ought to be killed at a distance rather than in hand-to-hand combat. It requires precision, calculation, and clear thinking.
> 
> What could go wrong?


	2. Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Living in Haven isn't always a fight for survival; there are some lighter moments, too.
> 
> That doesn't mean they're not important to Frisk, though. Now if only she could find her partner...

“You’re gonna lose this year, punkin!  You don’t have your ol’ partner to-”

The taunt was cut off by a dull thud and a low groan, and Frisk grinned.  “Y’alright over there, Mattis?”

“He’s fine,” came a high female voice.  “I’ll keep him in line.”

Mattis and his wife, Mirabel, had been partners for years before they were ever in a relationship.  Mattis was a kind and honest man who’d lived in Haven his whole life, with a tendency to speak his mind more than was considered proper.  Mirabel was a refugee from the dregs of Dawnwater, one of the last big cities on the continent.  She’d been born into some level of nobility - the kind that takes etiquette classes and fancy dinners seriously - and although she’d adapted well, she was a staunch defender of politeness and courtesy.

They’d hated each other on sight.

Frisk shifted back into the shade of the tarp strung up against the building behind her, looking out over the outer wall of Haven.  She didn’t bear any ill will towards Mattis for his comments - the pain of losing Chara felt more like a scar than an open wound, now - but she wasn’t going to interfere if Mirabel wanted to sink her claws into her man.  It was like flirting for those two.

“Oi,” came a voice from the other side of her, “Aren’t you supposed to be on the ‘bat shift’ now?”

She turned to see a huge man with dark skin and sad eyes, his buzz-cut hair brushing the underside of the makeshift lean-to.  “They let me out of my cage for the competition, but only under the condition that I represent them well.”

“Hah!  Still good to see you, Frisk.”

“You too, Noah.”

“How’s the night shift treatin’ you?”

“Well enough.  It took some getting used to, but I’m adjusting.  Slowly but surely.”

“Heard you got medevaced out on, what, your second or third patrol?”

“Third, yeah.”

“Wow.  What a welcome.”

“It was...pretty bad, but nothing like that’s happened since.”

“I sure hope not!  They called Squad 16 in to clean up, and  _ man _ those things are  _ big. _  I saw what you ‘n your new partner did to that den.  Rumor is that was mostly you?”

“Pft.  I only got the babies.  My partner took out Daddy Bear.”

“Wow.”  Noah ran his eyes over her as if he still couldn’t believe she was in one piece.  He’d always looked out for her and Chara, more than was required of him as a squadmate, and she felt a pang in her heart when she realized it had been  _ months _ since she’d last seen him in more than passing.  “I’m just glad you landed on your feet.  After...gosh.  I still blame myself for…”

“I think we all do.  In the end, though, Chara...Chara made her choices.”

“Yeah, but still…”

“I know.”

They stood there in the shade of the canopy for a moment, basking in the camaraderie that comes with years of fighting and eating and sleeping and making rude body noises in close proximity.

“So...where’s your new partner, punkin?”

Frisk looked around, frowning.  “He’ll show up.  Eventually.   _ Hopefully.” _

“Heh.  I’m surprised he’s sticking with active duty, especially after what you two’ve been through.  He’s a legend down in R&D, y’know.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  Figures he wouldn’t tell you, and you avoid the office blocks like they’re infected.  That Sans of yours’s got his hands in a lot of pies, but no one knows why.  Remember that energy project they were working on a while back?  That thing where they were trying to tap geothermal heat?  He pretty much ran the entire thing, so I hear.  Darndest thing: it was like he knew  _ exactly _ what he was doing, down to who would show up late for work and who would trip over power cords at the wrong time.”

“That’s...weird.  He hasn’t shown any odd prescient tendencies while working with me, but...do you think…?”

“He can see the future? Dunno, but that’s what some say.  My new partner - you haven’t met her yet, right? - she collects information like some girls collect shoes.  It’s weird.  Gotta try her donuts, though.  Anyways she was telling me some of what she found.  No one knows a whole lot about ‘im - pretty quiet guy, I guess - but at least I’m not as worried about you out there now.”

There was a trilling laugh somewhere behind their lean-to, and Noah shook his head with a smile.  “Speak of the devil; that’s my cue.  See you around, hey?”

“Yeah.  Drinks sometime, on me.”

“Gonna take you up on that!”  He gave her a jaunty wave as he walked off.

Without Noah to distract her from her thoughts, Frisk’s mind wandered.  Where  _ was _ Sans, anyways?  He said he’d be on time, and while she new better than to trust him on that, she’d felt confident that he wouldn’t let her down.  This was important to her.

Mirabel peeked around the corner a moment later, a pitcher in one hand.  “Your partner’s not here yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well.”  She gestured, and Frisk held out her canteen for the other woman to fill.  The water was clean and good and felt amazing on her dry throat.  “He had  _ better _ show up.  Mattis will never let me hear the end of it if we win because you didn’t have a spotter.”

“He’ll be here.”  She tried to sound more confident than she felt.  “Just you watch: we’ll beat the pants off the pair of you and everyone here.”

Mirabel chuckled.  “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” she drawled, eyes sharp.  “Me and the old corncob over there have been practicing.  You and your new ‘eyes’ have been together, what, two months?  Three at most?  You’re good, Frisk, but ‘good’ doesn’t cut it if you don’t know where to  _ shoot.” _

Frisk laughed it off, but Mirabel was right.  Sans was a good spotter but hardly the best.  Not nearly up to Chara’s level.  That was fine - he was new, and he improved a little more every day - but it also put Frisk’s reputation at risk.

For the past three years, she and Chara had dominated Haven’s annual sniper competition.  For most of the residents, it was simply a show of skill: a reassurance that those sworn to protect them were capable.  For the snipers themselves, it was much more serious.  They lived in a world of kill or be killed, shoot the mutant charging at you or lose half your squad and probably your face.  Bragging rights were the ultimate status symbol.

Every sniper had shot more mutants than they cared to count; that wasn’t a good measurement.  Anyone could argue that shooting a bear mutant from a mile away atop the wall was easier than blasting a hole through a giant insect in the middle of the woods at night, or vice versa.  This?  This was as close to an apples-to-apples contest as they could come up with.  The twenty best snipers in Haven lined up along the eastern wall with their spotters, ready to shoot down whatever the scouts managed to scare up out of the forest.  Points were awarded for accuracy, speed, and the size of the target.  Ten shots each.  Winner take all.

Mattis and Mirabel had been reigning champions before Frisk and Chara managed to grab the title.  It was amazing what those two could do when they stopped arguing long enough to focus: they were an inspiration to every sniper in the region.  Beating them had been on Chara’s bucket list since they were teenagers shooting frozen peas with a makeshift air rifle in the backyard of their apartment complex.

Chara had been sure the other snipers would explode, that first time she and Frisk won.  Instead, they had been hailed as heroes.  Sure, there had been some suspicious goo in Chara’s sleeping quarters the morning after - she’d never fully forgiven Mirabel for that - but otherwise it had been friendly competition.

_ Well, _ Frisk thought,  _ Looks like the Dynamic Duo will be on top again. _  She promised herself she wouldn’t blame Sans for their inevitable defeat.

The pop of the overhead speaker brought her back to reality.  “Snipers, please report to your stations!  We will begin in thirty minutes.  Once again, the sniper competition will begin in thirty minutes.  All snipers and spotters, please report to your assigned stations for an absolutely  _ marvelous _ display of skill and-”

She rolled her eyes.  The announcer - a monster with a robotic body named Mettaton - fancied himself an entertainer.  He was reprimanded nearly every time he was on the airwaves, but somehow he kept getting assigned to announce major events.  He was a crowd favorite, after all; the fact that the event organizers kept trying to keep him on topic was part of the act, now.

Chara couldn’t stand the guy.

Slowly, Frisk made her way over to her station, keeping an eye out for her partner.  Sans was usually easy to spot when he was off-duty - he always wore this thick, fuzzy blue parka that caused heat stroke just by proximity - but he was conspicuously absent.

She settled into her seat, bouncing her leg and letting her eyes roam over the edge of the forest.  Sans  _ knew _ how important this was to her, right?  Her squadmate, Tricia, had made a big deal out of the fact that Frisk was now representing the night shift.  That meant Papyrus knew, which meant Sans had no excuse, really.

Minutes ticked by.  She could feel Mirabel and Mattis glancing at her every so often and deliberately ignored them.  She was going to shoot with or without Sans.  The memory of sharp claws pierced her mind, and she shuddered.  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d let her down.

“hey.  hey, am i late?”  Sans - wearing the gaudiest red outfit and a hat with...was that a hot dog on it? - appeared next to her in a flash of blue.

“Yes.”  Frisk glanced at the clock in confirmation.  The competition started in two minutes.

“oh, it hasn’t started yet-”

“We were supposed to be here early.  Most of us have been here since noon.”

Some of her frustration must have bled into her voice, because Sans’s smile faltered.  She sighed.  She was trying to work on the whole bitterness thing, but it was  _ hard _ sometimes.

“I’m sorry.  Just...let’s get this over with.”  She gently picked up her chosen rifle - a custom job she’d put together herself from scraps and hand-me-downs - and cradled it in her lap, checking her ammo.

A hand came down on her shoulder.  “hey…”

“What?”  It came out sharper than she intended, and she felt herself wincing a little.

“this...really means a lot to ya, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”  She didn’t have time to explain to her rookie partner why, especially when he wouldn’t care to begin with.

“alright.  well, i guess there’s no helpin’ it.  they allow magic in this competition, right?”

“Yeah, but...wait, what?”

“wanna see something cool?”

“As long as it takes - hang on - less than thirty seconds, sure.”

Sans’s eyes went dark, the way they did sometimes when he was especially angry or worried, then one eye lit up with a blinking blue and yellow light that was painful to look at.  It felt unnatural, in a way most magic just  _ wasn’t. _  Noah’s words echoed back to her.  Sans had been in R&D.  That covered...well, quite a lot.  Everything from developing new food sources to implementing a proper power grid to trying to find a cure for the infection.

And, apparently, making creepy eye-glowing powers.  Or was that natural?  Frisk felt bad for assuming, but only for a moment.  The way the guy was grinning at her, he knew he’d disturbed her.

She took a deep breath, steeling her expression.  “And this does…?”

“heh.  watch and be amazed.”

It would have been a little more impressive without the hot dog hat, but she had to hand it to him: it did look pretty cool.

Mettaton’s voice came through the speakers with a volume Frisk was not prepared for.  “Aaaaalright, ladies and gentlemen!  It’s time for the one and only annual sniper competition!  Twenty of the best, the brightest, the  _ bravest _ people in all of Haven will compete in a ruthless and brutal display of skill-”

Sans was starting to look a little worried.  Frisk realized, belatedly, that she really hadn’t given him much information about what they’d be doing.  “They’ll tell us when it’s time to shoot,” she whispered.  “The bracket here in front of my seat will keep my gun steady, and the magazine I have loaded up holds ten shots.  You just point me in the right direction, like when we’re out in the field.”

The glowing eye flickered a little, but he nodded.

“Aaaand first up is the team of Noah  Okereke and Muffet!  And Muffet, darling, may I say that you are looking  _ fabulous _ today-”

“so, uh, what’re we shooting at?”

“Oh.  Mutants, like always.  They have scouts waiting to flush them out.  Sometimes there aren’t enough and they have to set up targets, but we have a lot of mutants in the area right now so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“oh.  okay.”

Frisk watched Noah’s first few shots with a critical eye and a spare scope.  He was good, but his performance was poorer than it had been in the past.  He and Muffet had been working together for even less time than she and Sans had, so that was expected.  She winced a little when his third, fourth, and fifth shots missed entirely.  Muffet wasn’t accounting for crosswinds.

“you used to be on a squad with this guy, right?”

“Noah?  Yeah.  If you think he’s good with a rifle, you should see him with a machete.  Not many folks are crazy enough to get into hand-to-hand combat with a tiger mutant, but he acts like it’s nothing.  He knows a little healing magic, too.  He’s real handy to have around in a fight: a regular jack of all trades.  I don’t know much about his partner, though.”

“muffet?  she’s the leader of the spider clan.  she used to have a chain of bakeries up north, before everything fell apart.”

“Huh.  I’m surprised they paired Noah with a chef.”

Sans snorted.  “chef?  heh.  muffet cares about exactly two things: her clan and her money.  baking was only ever a means to an end with her.”

“You sound bitter.”

“oh, she feuded with a guy i once knew.  he ran a bar, and dear miss muff wanted a monopoly on monster eateries in the area.  it got a little...explosive, sometimes.   _ she _ didn’t care if anyone got caught up in the crossfire.”

“...Oh.”  She knew monsters took their food seriously, but good grief.

Noah finished with a respectable score, then Mettaton announced the next team in line.

“so, uh, what’s the objective in this...competition?”

“We want to kill as many critters as we can, as quickly as we can, with ten bullets.  Extra points for anything unusually small.”

Sans was scanning the treeline.  “any bonus for something unusually large?”

“Depends.  If we can get a one-shot kill on certain types of mutants, that might help.  Usually we go after the little ones, though, if we’re confident the risk will pay off.”

“gotcha.”

They watched the next few teams in silence.  Some of the old staples of the competition were doing  _ very _ well, including one guy who always drew comments for appearing to be alone.  The other snipers knew better; his spotter was a ghost-type monster who had possessed his rifle in a fit of rage.  It would have been more effective if the monster wasn’t quite so cranky, but they put on an excellent showing.

“Aaaaand next up is last year’s champion, Frisk!  And her new partner-” there was a pause, “S-Sans the skeleton!  Let’s hear it for this new team!”

“Sans...what did you do?”  Frisk asked, glancing at her partner.  Sans was grinning in a way that could only mean trouble.

“what?  me?  cause trouble for mettaton?  why, frisk, you wound me!”

“Uh-huh.”  Mettaton was rambling.  It was actually kind of funny.  “Is this going to affect our score?”

“nah.”

“Good  _ or _ bad.  I don’t want to win just because you’re blackmailing the announcer.”

“we’re good.”

The look on his face was worrisome.  He’d probably considered it at one point.  Oh, well.  She took a deep breath and locked her rifle into the bracket that would keep it steady for her, fingers flying over the clasps and adjusting the knobs that allowed her to pivot.  Her clip of ten rounds was already loaded and ready to go; this particular gun didn’t need her to reload after each shot.

“And begin in three!”

“trust me,” Sans whispered, and his glowing eye seemed to burn a little brighter.

“What?”

“Two!”

Frisk glanced over at him.  “You don’t have a spotter’s scope.  You don’t even have binoculars.”

“One!”

_ “Trust me.” _

“Go!”  There was a loud buzzer noise.

She drew a deep breath.  “Okay.”

A moment after the buzzer sounded, there was movement in the forest.  The scouts were flushing more of those abominations out of the woods.  Being 19th of the 20 pairs competing, it was honestly surprising that there were so many left.  Either the situation was worse than she’d thought or the scouts had been using traps to hold some of the creatures.

“windspeed, 6 knots south-southeast.  distance to first target, 985 meters and counting.  bullet drop normal.  see that b-34 just left of your center?”

“Yes.”

“that’s our target.  aim for center mass, 3 figures up and 2 left.”

“Three up, two left on center.”

Frisk carefully turned the dials on her rifle, letting the familiar flow of battle slip over her.  She was still nervous and on edge, and a little angry with Sans, but she was used to his style.  Once she’d nudged the scope into the proper position she took the shot.

It hit, but barely.  The creature was still moving, despite missing a limb from the sheer power behind her bullet.  She ignored the disappointed noises from the crowd, focusing instead on her partner.

“target is changing course, heading west.  aim for the nose.  2 figures up and 5 left.”

She was already adjusting before he finished speaking.  “Two up, five left on the nose.”  As soon as her rifle was steady, she fired.  It was a clean headshot.

“target kia.  next target, f-1 south-southwest of prior.”

It took Frisk a moment to spot the small, rabbit-like mutant through her scope.  “Got it.”

“windspeed picking up slightly.  three up, three left.”

“That won’t hit-”

“trust me.”

She was already locked on, so she held her breath and took the shot.

_ Miss. _

“damnit, gusts.  target is stationary.  4 up, 3 left.”

She didn’t have anything to lose, really.  “Four up, three left.”

Another miss.

“We can’t keep going for the small ones if we can’t hit them.”

_ “damnit, _ alright.  just...”

She didn’t wait for him.  Instead, she readjusted herself - working on instinct; her rifle scope was noticeably less powerful than a proper spotter’s scope - and was shocked when the thing exploded.  That would improve their score, even if her accuracy was worse than it had been in years.

“target...kia.  um. uh.  okay…”

“Sans.  I need something to shoot.”

“okay.  okay.  right.  uh...next target, a-45 due west.”

“Got it.”

“moving northeast.  crosswind picking up, roughly 7 knots.  4 up, 1 right.”

The angle looked awful, but she complied.  “Four up, one right.”

A clean headshot.

Frisk distantly registered cheers, but dismissed them.  They were unimportant.

“target kia.  next, due north.  just outside the treeline.  a-32, but a small one.”

“Got it.”

“3 up, 2 left.”

“Three up, two left.”  The shot blew half the creature away uncleanly, but after a moment’s pause it started crawling again.  Mutants were  _ hard _ to kill.  “Target down.”

“i see it.  hold...hold...okay, 1 up, 2 left.”

“One up, two left.”

“target kia.”

“Two more rounds; gimme something good.”

“okay.  okay.  shoot.  uh, okay.  re-center.”

She sat up, made sure she was aligned to center, and cleared the fine-tuning dials on her rifle.  “Clear.”

“up and left of center is an a-165.”

That large, hulking bear-like figure was one Frisk saw in her nightmares.  Her hands shook...but only for a moment.  “Got it.”

“wind’s died back down to around 4 knots, so you should have a better shot.  4 up, 2 left.”

“Four up, two left.”

The trembling in her hands was what did it; one small nudge of the rifle translated into several meters of distance between her and the target.

Sans didn’t miss a beat.  “target is on the move, heading east very quickly.  aim for the nose.  4 up, 3 right.”

“Four up, three right on the nose.”

Its head disappeared, blown away by the sheer force of the sniper round that had been put cleanly between its ears.  She knew, before Sans confirmed it, that they’d gotten a killshot.

The world faded back into focus.  “Aaand a solid showing from current reigning champion, Frisk, and her new partner!”

The crowd erupted into cheers.

Frisk’s hands were shaking when she sat back, eyes closed.  She wanted to curl up against a warm body, the way she and Chara used to after a particularly stressful day, sharing the comfort that comes from years of friendship.  But the only person there was Sans.

His hand - hard edges and lines - came down on her shoulder firmly.  “that was  _ great, _ frisk.  you did really well.”

Her laugh was a little shaky.  “You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.  That was mediocre at best.”

“what?  you got five kills in ten shots.  that’s better than we normally get.”

“Yeah, in the forest at night.  During the day shift a 50/50 is about average for what we’re expected to shoot.  Last year I got seven; the year before, nine.  No crosswinds that day, it was great.”

“well.”  She could tell Sans didn’t know what to say to that.  “i.  uh, sorry.”

“Not your fault.  We’ll get better over time.”

He still looked a bit depressed.  Frisk was starting to realize that, despite the way he normally acted around others, the cheerfulness was mostly an act.  She regretted being so blunt, even if she was right.

“Why don’t you tell me what you were doing with your eye?  I don’t often see spotters try to scope without, well, a scope.”

That perked him up.  “oh, this?  i’ve been experimenting, and i think i can use gravity magic and some nifty calculations to project bullet drop based on different factors.  it, uh.  needs some work, apparently.”

“You were  _ experimenting?” _  If that was the case, Frisk was surprised she’d gotten a 50/50.  No wonder some of his calls were a little off.

“well...you weren’t the  _ first _ guinea pig.  paps fired off a few rounds for me at the practice field.”

“Sans, the practice field is one of the calmest places out here.  All you have to account for  _ is _ bullet drop.”

“hey, i know how to account for crosswinds-”

“Yeah, but up on the walls here we often have to shoot through two or even three crosswinds, depending on which way the wind’s blowing and how it’s interacting with the landscape and the curve of the outer walls.  There are usually little flags out between us and the forest to give us an idea of what’s going on, actually, but they took those down for the competition.  Heck, man, I’m not complaining; it’s pretty amazing that we scored as high as we did without practice in these circumstances.”

“well.  still, i...uh.  sorry.”

“Look.”  She took a deep breath.  “After this, I’m gonna try to snag Noah and take him out for drinks.  We’ll bring his partner along, maybe, and make an event of it.”

“we?”

“I’m inviting you along.”

“w-what?”

“You.  Me.  That grinning idiot who shot first and his spider-donut-assassin partner.  Y’know a good bar around here?  Because I’m convinced you know every bar in this place, if only because I’ve been called to drag you home from them.”

“uh.  sure?”

“Great.  Let’s wait for the Dynamic Duo to finish and head out; they’ll announce the results on the evening radio broadcast.”

Mattis fired his last shot - a one-hit-kill on a devastatingly fast and vaguely fox-shaped creature - to the cheers of the crowd and his fellow sniper teams.  He mumbled something to his wife that made her slap him upside the head, but they were both grinning widely.

They’d done  _ really _ well: eight kills in ten shots.  Taking into consideration how windy it was, Frisk was reluctantly impressed.  If she was going to lose, she might as well lose to the best.

Sans didn’t look like he agreed, though.  He’d been watching Mattis’s shots closely, and he could count just as well as anyone else.

“C’mon,” Frisk said before he could mope too much, “Let’s go find Noah.”

Noah was easy to spot, standing head and shoulders above most of the crowd.  He grinned widely and waved them over.

“Want to get drinks?”  she asked.

“What?”

She repeated herself.

“WHAT?”

“DRINKS!”  She made the sign for drinking alcohol, exaggerating the motions as the crowd pressed in around and between them.  “ON ME.”

Noah roared something to his partner and started leading them down the street.

With him in the lead, the crowd parted like water around a boulder.  Sans, who was nearly lost in the crowd, held onto the back of Frisk’s coat and muttered directions to whatever bar he was taking them to, which she then yelled to Noah.  It was an awkward arrangement, and they got lost at least twice, but eventually they made it to a ramshackle building that smelled like smoke and booze.  Just the kind of place Sans seemed to like.

Despite the crowds on the streets for the festival, there were very few people inside.  It...wasn’t surprising, actually; even for a place like Haven, built from the wreckage of anything left over from the dead cities around it, the building looked like a dump.

Sans relaxed the moment he walked in the door.

For a moment, Frisk was sure Noah was going to bolt.  Heck,  _ she _ wanted to bolt; she wasn’t picky, having grown up in streets and alleyways for most of her early life, but this place reeked of regret and hangovers.  She wasn’t going to leave her partner, though.

Apparently, Noah was in the same bind.  As he was turning to her (probably to make his excuses) his eyes caught on someone sitting at the bar.  Frisk glanced over as well; sitting in the dull gloom of the bar, delicately holding a teacup, was a purple monster.  She could see three pairs of arms folded on the bartop and at least one pair of legs tucked elegantly under the bar stool.  Given the evidence, this could only be Noah’s donut-making spider partner.

The spider girl didn’t react when the group approached, even when Noah clapped her on the shoulder before hunching over onto the stool next to her.

“Hey, Muff!” he growled.  “How’d you get her before us?”

A high, trilling laugh.  “Oh, you know.  I have my  _ ways.” _

The way the monster girl very obviously avoided looking at Sans was more suspicious than if she’d pointed at him and screamed bloody murder.  Clearly, she wasn’t interested in making friends.

_ Great. _

Noah chuffed.  “Muff, this is Frisk.  Punkin, this is Muffet, my new partner.”

The spider girl finally turned, blinking five eyes at once.  “Oh, it’s nice to meet you, dearie!  I’ve heard so much about you!”

Frisk nodded back, not sure what to say.

“Oh, but I didn’t realize you were paired with  _ Sans. _  Goodness, you poor thing!  Who did you upset?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean-”

“Please, dearie, don’t be shy!  You were the best gunner in this entire outpost.  You should have been paired up with the best!  And, well, I think we  _ all _ saw that Sans is hardly the  _ best…” _

If asked, Frisk would have sworn that Sans had composure of steel.  And yet…

Noah shot her a look of pained apology as Sans walked away.  It was a fascinating maneuver on the skeleton’s part: he looked for all the world like he’d just decided to wander off.  His shoulders were relaxed, his hands were tucked into his pockets, and his grin was unstrained.

It was all a little  _ too _ casual.

Frisk muttered an apology to Muffet that made the spider girl grin knowingly and followed him to a booth tucked into the corner.  It was small - barely able to fit Sans and Frisk together, and they were both petite - and was probably made to accommodate some of the shorter monsters.  The only advantage that she could see was its placement: sitting as he was, Sans was completely blocked off from the bar.

After a long moment, Sans dropped the act and slumped forward onto the table.  “sorry,” he muttered.

“It’s no problem.”

“you wanted to come here to hang out with your friend-”

“Yeah, but his partner’s being kind of a jerk right now.  We can hang out later.  Right now, let’s get some beers and wait for the announcement of the scores.”

It was apparently the wrong thing to say.  Sans was a miserable puddle of bones and magic for most of the evening.  Even the beer she got him - laced with enough magic to make her toes curl - couldn’t cheer him up.

She kicked herself.  It was  _ her _ fault he was miserable.  She hadn’t even thought about how he would react to the shooting competition.  Just because she was competitive didn’t mean  _ he _ was.  She should’ve sat out until he was more comfortable with his position, but it hadn’t even occurred to her.  She’d thought only about herself...then taken it out on him.

Two and a half beers in, the scores were announced.  Mattis and Mirabel placed first, of course.  Frisk winced a little, though, when the rest of the results were read out.  She hadn’t placed second.  She hadn’t even placed third.  She and Sans had placed  _ fourth. _

“i’m sorry,” he muttered.  “all m’fault…”

“No.   _ I’m _ sorry.  I shouldn’t have put so much pressure on you.”

“but ‘m too lazy.  paps always says so.  should’ve...tried harder.”

He wasn’t even looking at her anymore.

“Sans, that’s not...I’m not...ugh.”  She knocked back the rest of her drink, feeling a little fuzzy herself.  She didn’t normally go out drinking, and she was feeling it.  “You shouldn’t have to...to change who you are for me.  That’s not what this is.  We’re partners; we both hafta compr’mise.  Com-prom-ise.”

He chuckled a little, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Anyways.  You don’t like being put on the spot.  I  _ get _ it.  I should’ve asked you, or explained it better.  We could’ve practiced your...your eye thing together before trying it out.  I’m sorry too.”

“heh.  we’re always both sorry, huh.  but...that doesn’t change the fact that i’m not good enough for you.  you deserve better.  someone on your skill level.”

“We’ve been over this, buddy.  You want to look out for your brother.”

Sans’s laugh sounded hollow and his eyes were dark, and for the first time Frisk was really, truly struck by the fact that he was a  _ skeleton. _  “he doesn’t need me.”  One bony finger traced the rim of his mug.   _ “no one _ needs me.”

It was a strange thing, hearing those words come out of his mouth.  No one needed him??  He was a favorite regular in every bar in town!  His brother (for all his complaints) doted endlessly over him!  He was, if Noah and Muffet were to be believed, a veritable genius who had gone from a desk job in R&D to being a damn competent spotter in a matter of  _ months! _

No one needed  _ him? _

_ He _ wasn’t the one who was terribly, hopelessly  _ alone. _

Without really thinking, Frisk reached over and swatted his skull.  He gave a funny little high-pitched noise, nearly spilled his drink, and looked up at her with wide eye sockets like he was seeing her for the first time ever.

“Don’t you talk that way about  _ my _ partner.”  He was the only person she really had, now; the only person she could rely on to be there constantly.   _ “I _ need him.”

He stared at her.  For one long moment, she was sure he was going to burst into either tears or laughter, and she wasn’t sure which was worse.  Instead, his perpetual grin turned into something surprisingly genuine.

“ok.”

“Okay?  Okay what?”

“ok.”

“What do you mean?”

“ok.”

She snorted.  She wasn’t even sure why it was funny.  “Really?”

“ok.”

“I, Frisk, am the best gunner in Haven.”

“ok.”

“Sans the skeleton smells like dirty socks.”

“ok.”

“I get all your fries the next time we go out for lunch after a mission.”

“ok.”

“Sans loves his brother Papyrus a whoooole bunch and reads him bedtime stories every night-”

“lies.  lies and slander.”

They looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

“So,” Noah said, walking up to their table.  His partner was nowhere to be seen.  “This is where you guys headed off to.”

“Yup,” Frisk said, raising her glass to him.  She tried to drink to his honor, but...it was empty.  Drat.

A large hand slid it from her fingers.  “And...I think you’ve had enough of  _ that, _ punkin.  You too, bone boy.”

He wandered off with both the glass and the mug.  Frisk sighed.  “He’s worse than a dad.  He’ll let you drink, then ruins the party.”

Sans hummed.  “hey, why does he call you ‘punkin?’”

“Dunno.  Nickname, I guess.  I was punkin; Ch-chara was ‘pie.’  Punkin and Pie.  Like pumpkin pie, y’know?”

“heh.  i got it.  but...why  _ pie?” _

She shifted on her seat so she could gesture a little better.  “So.  So when we were kids, Chara and I lived wherever we could.  Sometimes friends would let us crash on their couches, but usually we just...made do.  We didn’t have proper jobs, either; we just did whatever we could and practiced shooting in our spare time.

“Well, one time we helped Mrs. Tibbs - that baker over on the west side of town - with unboxing a shipment.  She’d asked us to help her carry stuff for her ‘cause her hip was bothering her, but we stayed and helped her put everything away  _ and _ inventory.  S-so-” she snorted, trying to contain her laughter and failing a little, “So we get done with all that, and it’s about dinnertime.  We worked through lunch and none of us even  _ noticed, _ because hey, we were busy.  Then while Mrs. Tibbs was paying us for our work, Chara’s stomach made this growl.  A  _ real _ growl.  I’m pretty sure they heard it two streets over.  And...and Mrs. Tibbs, she just gave us this  _ look. _

“She went into her kitchen and came out with this huge pie.  Bigger than Chara’s head.  And she gave it to her, saying something about not letting kids go hungry.

“So we’re heading home, starving hungry, carrying this huge pie.  Halfway there, we ran into a group of boys playing cops and robbers.  The ‘robbers’ ran up to Chara and demanded her pie.  And Chara...she just took off.”  She snickered again.  “Didn’t get far; just ducked around the corner and...and started  _ eating the pie. _  She was t-trying to  _ eat the whole pie herself _ so the boys didn’t get it!”

She laughed and Sans joined in, but there was something worried in his eyes.

“it shouldn’t be that funny…”

“Huh?  Why?”

“i mean, you were  _ hungry.” _

It took her beer-fogged mind a moment to process that.  “What?  No!  We weren’t  _ starving; _ we had folks lookin’ out for us.  We just hadn’t eaten all day, and Chara...well, she’s kinda the possessive type.  Heh.”

He snorted a little louder than he probably meant to.  “well, your friend’s gone, and our booze is gone...wanna order more?”

“Nah.  I’d better get you home before your brother starts worrying.”

He hummed and resisted her attempts to slide him out of the booth, but he was a skeleton and she had actual muscles.  He wound up in an awkward half-fireman carry, slung over her shoulder as she shuffled down the street towards his apartment block.

The apartments he and his brother lived in were nice, especially for a pair of boys, but the Patrol paid folks well to risk their lives.  It wasn’t fancy, but it was neat and smelled clean.  (Papyrus’s doing, no doubt.)

She put him down so he could open the door with a key he pulled from nowhere, then pushed him physically into the apartment.  He tipped over as soon as he cleared the doorway, and Frisk was very tempted to just leave him there for his brother to deal with.

Then she saw the note on the kitchen table.

It read: BROTHER! I AM GOING TO SPEND THE EVENING WITH UNDYNE AND PROBABLY HAVE A SLEEPOVER AFTER!  DO NOT WAIT UP FOR ME!

On the back, Papyrus had written: I MEAN IT THIS TIME!

...Interesting.  She wondered if Sans had known the apartment was going to be empty.  That thought tugged at her heart a little.

Well, he was  _ her _ partner, and no partner of hers was going to sleep on the floor.  She hauled him upright, ignoring his protests, and began dragging him towards the hallway that led to the rest of the apartment.

As they passed through the living room, though, he got heavy.  Impossibly heavy.  It was so drastic and sudden that it was  _ obviously _ magic.  Also, he was glowing a bright blue color; that was a dead giveaway.

“Fine,” she muttered, struggling to get him onto the couch.  “Guess you don’t...ugh...want to be in your...oh, you have  _ got _ to be kidding me.”

Sans was out like a light, or was very good at pretending he was.  And he had very effectively tangled one hand into her hair where her ponytail draped over her shoulder.

She shifted, trying to release it, but he made a noise of protest.

_ Fine. _

She was tired, a little drunk, and frustrated.  She hadn’t been looking forward to going home to her own empty apartment, either.

With a heave, she sat him mostly upright and slid onto the couch beside him.  The hand that was caught she wrapped around her shoulders to keep it from pulling, and she wrapped her corresponding arm around him to keep him still.  The hot dog hat - still on his head despite everything - she took off and set on the end table beside them.

There.  It would probably look weird to any outsiders - notably his brother, who would probably wake them up whenever he got home - but Sans had brought it upon himself.  And...it was kinda nice to half-snuggle with someone, even a pokey skeleton, after the day she’d had.

Willing her mental voice to silence, she drifted off into a restless sleep.


	3. Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haven gets a surprise, and Frisk and Sans prove their worth.
> 
> Sometimes, second chances come in the most mysterious of ways.

Frisk woke to the sounds of a door creaking shut very, very slowly.  She looked around, disoriented for a moment.  Oh, right; she was in Sans and Papyrus’s apartment.  The latter was shutting the front door of his apartment with obvious care, wincing at the squeaky hinge.

“Hi,” he whispered, louder than most people’s normal speaking voices.  Sans, still tangled up in her hair and coat, shifted against her at the sound.  “It looks like you both had fun too!  Sleeping on the couch does not sound like a very fun sleepover, but then again, my brother is very lazy-”

Said brother shifted again, making a strange chuffing noise.

“I will put my sleepover bag in my room and start breakfast,” Papyrus announced before skipping down the hallway.

Frisk jostled the skeleton clinging to her.  “I know you’re awake.”

“oh?  what gave it away?”

“You were laughing at your brother.”

Sans huffed again.

“C’mon, get offa me.”

“can’t.”

“Sans…”

“i tried first thing this morning.  i’m, uh, stuck.”

She tilted her head as best she could, looking down at her ponytail.  His bony little fingers were sure tangled in there good.

“Right.  Well, I’m not leaving my ponytail with you, so…”

“right…”

The little asshole laid his head back down on her shoulder, eye sockets sliding shut.

“Sans.”

He hummed.

“Sans, don’t go back to sleep.”

No response.

“I will get your brother, Sans.”

Nothing.

Frisk took a deep breath.  “Hey, Papyrus?”

He reappeared from the hallway, his outfit now covered in a frilly apron that demanded that she “KISS THE ~~CHEF~~ PAPYRUS.”  It was adorable.

She gestured to the skeleton attached to her hair.  “Your brother won’t let me go.”

The noise Papyrus made should have been illegal.  Or weaponized, one of the two.  “BROTHER, YOU HAVE FINALLY CAPTURED A HUMAN!”

With a surge of triumph, she felt Sans freeze.  Hah, so he _was_ still awake!

“I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU WOULD SINK TO SUCH LOWS TO ACCOMPLISH SUCH A SIMPLE THING, BUT YOUR LAZINESS TRULY KNOWS NO BOUNDS.  NOW, FRIEND FRISK, I WILL LEAVE YOU IN MY BROTHER’S CLUTCHES AND GO MAKE CELEBRATORY BREAKFAST SPAGHETTI!”

“now you’ve done it,” came a grumble from her shoulder.  “i hope you have a stronger stomach than most humans.”

“What was he talking about?  Capturing a human?”

“it’s.  uh.  a joke.  when paps was a kid he always wanted to capture a human-”

“IT IS NOT A JOKE, FRIEND FRISK!  DO NOT LISTEN TO HIS STRANGE AND INEXPLICABLE MISDIRECTIONS!  CAPTURING A HUMAN IS VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS!”

She gave her partner a _look._  He was starting to sweat, his captured fingers twitching against her collarbone.

“Hey, Papyrus?  Can you give your brother and I a moment?”

Papyrus gave the two of them an _audible_ wink and retreated back to the kitchen.

“Did he just…?”

“yeah.”

“How?”

“uh…”

“Nevermind.  Explain.”

“well, _i_ think he does it by-”

“No.  Capturing humans.  Explain.”

“ngh…”

She watched him contemplate teleportation and put it aside with a pained grimace.  He was attached; he’d take her with him if he tried, which would defeat the purpose.  And if he went after her hair with the scissors he was eyeing on the end table, she was going to wrestle him down.  Considering their relative sizes and body weights, she was confident she’d win.

“pft.  okay, okay.  paps’d probably tell you anyways if i didn’t.”

She filed that bit of information away for future use.

“paps and i grew up a long, long way from here, in one of those “monster safe zones.”  it was a “by monsters, for monsters” kind of place: only monsters were allowed in, for the most part.  there was a human city nearby but we rarely heard from them, aside from an exchange of trade goods.  oh, and there was a field where the humans would dump stuff they didn’t want anymore; we’d scavenge there.

“then the mutants hit the area, and they hit hard.  i’d been working with a...with a guy who had a lot of interests, including the infection back when it was just a few rats and such that looked kinda funny.  he warned that it wouldn’t stay small for long.  the humans knew how smart this guy was, so they put up some defenses, but it wasn’t enough.  it wasn’t _nearly_ enough.

“we were better prepared, though.  the human city was hit first, so we were able to lock the gates and get ready to destroy the mutants that showed up.  problem was...it wasn’t just mutant _animals.”_

Frisk shuddered, remembering Chara.

“we let those first humans in.  of course we did!  they were our neighbors; we’d known a lot of them forever, even if it was just radio chatter.  but...it was horrifying.  humans are a lot stronger than us, even when they’re not fully in control of their actions.  half a dozen humans took out nearly a quarter of our population before they were, uh, put down.

“so there was a law passed: if a human gets in, capture the human and call the guard.  the guard would figure out if the human was, uh, safe or not.  paps was really small at the time; the kids were kept out of it, for the most part, but that was the one thing they were told.  they, heh, they had catchy songs and everything.  man, when we moved down here so he could join the patrol it took a couple weeks to get the big guy to stop trying to capture every human he met.”

“IT WAS A GESTURE OF FRIENDSHIP!”  Papyrus called from the kitchen.  How he could hear the conversation, Frisk wasn’t sure.  “I DID NOT KNOW THAT OUR GRAND TRADITION OF HUMAN CAPTURE WAS NOT MORE WIDESPREAD!”

She struggled to keep her composure.  “I see.  Thanks for telling me.  Now can we please untangle your fingers from my hair?”

Sans was no help with untangling bony fingers from hair.  It was frustrating, but not surprising: while he had very bony fingers, he had precisely no hair of his own to practice on.

She’d managed to get him mostly detached when the alarm sounded.

“All gunners to the East Command Gatehouse,” a serene voice intoned over the wailing cry of sirens.  “All gunners to the East Command Gatehouse.  All civilians seek shelter.  I repeat: all gunners to the East Command Gatehouse-”

Frisk grabbed her partner and rushed for the door, nearly colliding with Papyrus who was holding a plate of...was that actually spaghetti?  With glitter on it??

“FRIEND FRISK, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

“C’mon, Papyrus!  They’re calling for everyone to the gatehouse!”

“BUT...I AM NOT…”

He looked a little lost.  Sans was no help; it looked like the guy was hyperventilating, or whatever skeletons did when they were overwhelmed.

She took a deep breath, trying to find a calm place outside the adrenaline that surged through her system.  “You’re the Great Papyrus.  We need you to help us figure out whatever’s going on at the wall.  Will you come with us?”

He looked at her, then down at his spaghetti, then back up at her.  The plate disappeared to...somewhere as he posed, apron rippling in a breeze that seemed to only affect him.  “THE GREAT PAPYRUS WILL LEAD THE WAY, FRIEND FRISK!”

“Great.  Sans, are you…?”

Nope, still out of things.  She hefted him up and held him against her like a little kid - he was surprisingly heavy, for a skeleton - and followed Papyrus out the door.

The streets were chaos.  If Papyrus wasn’t as tall as he was, Frisk would have lost him in the sea of humans and monsters streaming towards the shelters.  A few other gunners and spotters joined up with them as they passed the low-end apartment blocks where Frisk lived, and together they made their way towards the tall, grey building that served as the East Command Gatehouse.  Thankfully, it didn’t sound like much was happening, aside from a few scattered rifle shots.

Tricia was waiting for them when they entered the ground floor of the building, a familiar pair of guns tucked under her arm and the headband of a communicator tucked behind one ear.  “There you are!  We’ve been assigned to W290 and NW310.  Something’s coming from the forest, they’re saying.”

Frisk blinked, taking her rifle when it was shoved at her.  W290 was a section of the wall on the western side of Haven.  The forest was on the _eastern_ side.  “Why…?”

“They sent the first teams to show up right into the middle of the action, poor bastards.  We’re making sure nothing flanks us.  C’mon!”

Back across town they went, though the streets were infinitely quieter.  The little solar-powered cart Tricia picked up was low on battery juice, but managed to get them within easy walking distance of the western wall before slowing to a sad crawl that had her pounding on the steering wheel in frustration.

Haven was contained by a roughly circular wall: it wasn’t curved, but instead made up of 360 straight segments that were meticulously maintained.  (A trictohexacontagon, that shape was called; she’d looked it up once.  Chara had called her a nerd for two weeks straight.)  A circle would technically have given them the biggest inside area for the amount of wall, but the time and effort it would’ve taken to make and maintain curved wall pieces just wasn’t worth it.  So, straight segments it was.

The wall was arranged and labeled like a compass.  N0 was on the north side (and yes, people did call it “no”), S180 on the south, E90 on the east and so on.  Their assigned stations were just a little bit north of the westernmost point of the city, designations painted in blocky black military letters that stood out starkly against the light gray cement that lined the inner part of the wall.

They climbed the ladder at W270 and made their way along the top of the wall.  The gunners who had arrived before them nodded as they passed.  No one was watching the ground too closely.

And, Frisk realized as she settled herself into the gunner’s seat at NW310, there really wasn’t a need.  Whatever was happening was happening clear on the other side of Haven.  All up and down the northwestern part of the wall, the atmosphere was light and comfortable.  Gunners called jokes and taunts to each other while spotters perched behind them on the lookout seats pretended to see legions of mutants appearing out of thin air.  It was the day after a festival, still relatively early in the morning, and there was nothing _out there_ for them to shoot at.

It was around noon when they heard the first signs of trouble.  Sans had fallen asleep hours before, curled up against Frisk’s back like a bony cat.  Even Papyrus had lost the nervous edge he’d been carrying and was amusing himself by birdwatching and tracking the movements of the aerial scouts.  Tricia nodded along occasionally to whatever she heard over the comms, but Frisk suspected some bored newbie was broadcasting music over a non-regulated channel.

(She and Chara had done that once.  She could never hear Gastly Pickle again without a wave of embarrassment washing over her.)

Frisk herself was feeling a bit sore and hungry.  Between her night on the skeleton brothers’ couch, her hangover, and the constant pressure of the morning, she was ready to just climb back in bed and sleep the day away.   _Yay, night shift._

Tricia sat up suddenly, mouth slightly open and eyes glassy.  For one terrible moment, Frisk thought she’d been hit by something; then her expression shifted into one of intense concentration.  “W290 here, go ahead.”  She was only audible because of how _quiet_ everything else suddenly was.

Another pause.  Papyrus put his binoculars down and turned towards his partner.

“Roger.  We’ve seen nothing yet, but we’ll keep an eye out; over.  Yes sir, over.”

There was a crackle over the radio on Frisk’s hip.  “November-Hotel-One-Zero-Seven calling Delta-Zulu-Five-Three-Alpha, over,” came Tricia's rough voice.

She grabbed the radio and held it up to her mouth.  “Delta-Zulu-Five-Three-Alpha, go ahead.”

“They’re taking a beating over on the eastern side of the gate, and one of the air teams saw something headed our way.  Couldn’t get a good visual on it; could just be a fluke.  They’re sending a few teams back to reinforce the forest-side gate, but we’re staying here to hold the line.  Over.”

And sure enough, all the teams on either side of them were relocating.  Frisk felt something hot in her gut.  Was it because of her poor showing the day before that she was being left behind to watch the quiet side of the wall?  She and Chara had been a reliable team in the middle of attacks like this, picking off mutants from their usual post atop East Command Gatehouse.  Few could shoot from such a distance - the tower stood more than twice the height of the wall - but they’d been _good_ at it.

She pushed those thoughts aside.  “Roger.  What are we doing? Over.”

“You stay there, I’ll head down to W270.  Call out if you see something, over.”

Frisk shook her own partner awake as Tricia and Papyrus relocated.  Sans made groggy noises into her hair for several minutes before jerking up abruptly.

“who…?  what?”

“Good morning, sleepyhead.  Air patrol thinks they saw something headed our way, so we’ve...what’s up with you?”

Sans was stiff against her back.

“Sans?  Sans, what’s wrong?  Are you with me?”

“P-pap…”

“He and Tricia moved down the wall a bit.  Look over there and you’ll see them.  W270; see?  C’mon, I need you with me here.”

There was a tense moment when Frisk thought he would teleport and take her with him, but then he relaxed.  He adjusted himself in the spotter’s perch so he wasn’t laying on her, patting her shoulder apologetically.  “heh.  sorry; don’t know what came over me.”

“Your brother’s safe.  You’re safe.  Now.  Do you see anything?”

She heard a gentle click of bone on metal as Sans pulled his spotter’s scope out of thin air.  “...nothin’.  did the birdies say what they saw and where?”

“If they did, Tricia didn’t pass on that information.”  But Tricia was a good team leader.  A bit terse, but she was an effective communicator.  She didn’t leave out important bits of information that even a rookie like Sans would need to know.

“okay.  do we have any kind of comm device?”

“I need to leave my radio on this frequency in case Tricia needs to talk to us.  Let’s see...I have my old patch radio in my bag, but that wouldn’t let us talk to anyone.  Receiver only.”

“well...better’n nothing.”

She shuffled around in her bag - still a little messy, since she hadn’t had the chance to reorganize after the festival - and found the old radio at the bottom.  It flickered to life with an unpleasant crackle of static, and she quickly scanned to the Haven emergency communications frequency.

“NE40, do you copy?  Anyone at NE-four-zero, please respond.”

There was no response, and Frisk felt unease trickle like ice down her back.

“NE45, do you copy?  NE-four-five, please respond.”

Still nothing.

“Something’s wrong,” she muttered.  “If the wall’s been overrun, Haven Command should have a visual on it.  What the _hell_ could take out comms?  We use _radios._ Why would they…?”

Sans cursed under her breath.  “i can go check it out.”

“You can’t... _can_ you teleport clear across Haven?  I thought you had a range?”

“i can’t take much with me, but...i can make it.”

“Are you sure?”

“heh.  nope.  but i had a great nap just now, so i’m feeling confident.”

She peered over her shoulder, trying to gauge his expression.  It was impossible.  He was hard to read at the best of times, and she couldn’t see enough of him out of the corner of her eye to give her any idea of what he might be feeling.  “...Stay.”

“are _you_ sure?”

“Yes.  If you made it over there, then what?  You’d just get caught up in the mess, and I’d be without a spotter.  Stick with me.  We’ll see if we can flag down an aerial team to go scout.”

She felt his indecision in the way he kept shifting, but he stayed put.  After a minute or so, the soft clicking resumed.

“N10, do you copy?” the voice on the radio asked, desperation bleeding through the professional mask.  “N-one-zero, please respond.”

Nothing.

“N0, do you copy?  N-zero, please respond.  Command, this is Dispatch; please confirm no response from sector N-zero through E-nine-zero, over.”

“Roger, Dispatch, this is Command.  We can confirm no contact with N-zero through E-nine-zero for over an hour.  Visuals indicate that the wall is intact and all teams are in place, but we have radio silence; over.”

“Roger, Command.  We’re sending a runner down to evaluate the situation.  Please stand by.”

Frisk jiggled her leg against the concrete top of the wall.  She felt twitchy and irritable.  Even the slight lip of the channel that drained water off the wall felt like it was deliberately placed to annoy her.  She was tired, she was hungry, and she had a lot to think about-

“here.”

A chocolate bar appeared in front of one eye, and she grabbed it on reflex.  “Wow, uh, thanks?”

“heard you’ve been begging them off folks between missions.  figured you could use some cheering up after dealing with my bullshit last night.”

She wanted to address his ongoing self-depreciation, but the chocolate bar was a more pressing concern at the moment.  Chara had loved chocolate, but this particular brand was her favorite.  How the factory that made them had survived the mutant swarms was anyone’s guess, but somehow it kept chugging out these little chocolate bars when it felt like the whole world was teetering on the edge of collapse.

That didn’t mean they were common, even in a place like Haven.  It was a challenge to transport anything delicate so far south.  And yet, without fail, _someone_ always seemed to have a few tucked away for a rainy day.

“Thank you, Sans.  I don’t know where you found this, but...yeah, I like them.”

“uh...no problem?  i mean, i just get them from the break room down in r&d.  it’s usually pretty well guarded, but i know folks down there.”

Well.  That explained why they kept popping up.  Torn between her hunger and her desire to savor her treat, she nibbled the chocolate bar slowly but steadily.  “So are you the one who keeps selling them to people?  I’ve never seen them in stores.”

“who, me?”

That sounded awfully like a “yes.”  How ironic, that Chara had probably owed her easy supply of chocolate to Sans.

“anyways, feelin’ any better?”

Surprisingly, she did.  Sans laughed at her when she said so, but she pretended to ignore him.  She’d gotten used to hearing him laugh, and after the dark and damning hole he’d fallen into the night before...well.  She wasn’t going to complain.  “Thanks again.”

“no skin off my back.”

He was doing that funny little winking thing, she could _feel_ it.

“hey, about last night...uh, maybe ignore anything i said?  i can get a little...uh, morose when i drink.  so...no need to do anything funny-”

“In vino, veritas.”

“...nullo intellego?”

She didn’t know what he’d just said, but the bewilderment in his voice was amusing.  “It’s an expression, “truth in wine” or something like that.  It means people tend to be more honest when they’ve...indulged a bit, and pal, you were probably more tipsy than I was.”

There was an uncomfortable shifting behind her.

“Sure you don’t wanna talk about it?”

“oh, i’m _positive.”_

“Alright.  Well, I’m not gonna push you, but I hope you know that I’m not gonna think any worse of you just because of how you feel about yourself.”

“that’s an unusual way of putting it.”

“But you understand what I mean, right?”

He hummed a little.   _Click, click, click_ went his fingers on the scope.  “yeah, buddy.  i get it.”

That was probably the most open he’d ever been to her - sober, at least - so she’d take what she could get.

“something’s wrong.”

“Well, yeah.”

“no, i mean...there’s nothing _out there._  i’ve done a full sweep with my scope, and i don’t see anything.”

Frisk took a quick look through her spare rifle scope, scanning the horizon.  It was all grass and brush on this side of Haven, beginning to dry out as summer bled into fall.  The flags that helped spotters see crosswinds were fluttering in a lazy breeze.  “I don’t see anything either.  And I’m not sure where the aerial support teams went.  Your brother had a bead on them; let’s-”

“no, don’t draw attention to us.”  There was something tight and urgent in his voice.  “pretend everything’s normal.”

A flare of something hot against her back made her jump, her subconscious screaming _FIRE!!_ even though logic dictated it couldn’t be, not unless Sans had decided to take up pyrotechnics.

“sorry; magic.”

_Ah._

He leaned in a little closer, close enough that Frisk was worried the heat would become unbearable, but it didn’t.  It stayed just teetering on the uncomfortable edge between shower-hot and boiling-water-hot, even as one skeletal hand slowly extended over her shoulder trailing blue fire in its wake.

“there.  they’re under some kind of weird shield; i’ve never seen anything like it.  almost like one of those cloaking devices you see in sci-fi films, right?”

“Sans, _where are they?”_

“oh, heh, they’re still a bit far out there.  i could, uh, try to give you coordinates, but…well, after yesterday, i don’t think we’d do much good this far out.”

“Okay.  Okay.  We can call it in.”

“...are you sure?  we’ll sound crazy.”

A slightly hysterical giggle bubbled out of her mouth.  “That’s never stopped me before.  You can pop over and tell Tricia quietly enough, right?  It’s not _that_ far…”

“yeah, that’s no problem.  be right back.”

He carefully detached himself from her, and a moment later she saw him reappear next to Tricia and Papyrus in a flare of blue.  She turned back to the field.  She didn’t see anything, not even a ripple or a track.  Surely, something walking through the grass would displace it, right?

Her head was starting to hurt.

Sans reappeared in his seat with a clack that sounded uncomfortable.  “okay.  so, tricia’ll hail dispatch and get a special recon team out.  see anything, yet?”

She explained her problem with the grass.

“you really don’t see that?  damn, they’re better than i thought.  something’s weird about all this.  mutants aren’t coordinated; they never have been.  they don’t have the intelligence for it.  basic hunting tactics, yes; knowing how to take out our comms and work together across species...it’s never happened before.  not that i know of.”

Frisk was getting the idea that there was little Sans didn’t know of.

“ordinarily i’d say there’s no way for them to climb a wall this sheer - these are hooved critters; they’d have no grip - but given the circumstances it’s better to keep them well away from us.  okay.  they’re getting into range.  let me know when you’re centered.”

Frisk loaded her gun and settled it into the brace.  50/50 they’d shot the day before, and that was when she could actually see.  “How many?”

“3-4 dozen, maybe.”

Oh, hellfire.  There were up to _fifty_ of these things?

“windspeed, 2 knots southeast.  distance to first target, 833 meters and counting.  bullet drop normal.”

There was an erratic movement near one line of flags, right where Sans had indicated.  “I think I see something-”

“-the flags, yeah.  they’re spread out into groups; we’re aiming for the closest one.  okay.  ready?”

She double-checked that her gun was centered and breathed deeply.  “Ready.”

“we’ll have to go quick; they’re moving weirdly.  three figures down, two left, shoot immediately.”

She shot as soon as she had it locked in.

“two figures down.”

This time, her shot seemed to materialize a bloom of mutant parts where it impacted.  “Woah!”

“target kia.  two right…”

And so it went, shot after shot.  Frisk’s mind was blank, reacting to nothing but the sound of her partner’s voice and the movement of her gun.  It was like meditation, almost, once they fell into a rhythm of shoot-adjust-shoot-adjust.  She didn’t know who handed her a new magazine when she ran out - Sans’s hands were occupied, one reaching over her shoulder towards the invisible mutants and the other latched onto the back of her vest - but she didn’t question it.

“only three left.  re-center.  219 meters ahead, wait for my signal.”

She cleared her dials and focused on a flag 220 meters out from the wall, waiting for it to ripple.

“Hold fire!” someone yelled, painfully close.  “Hold your fire!”

The flag was trampled underfoot as the invisible mutant passed it, but she didn’t move.

“At ease, Frisk.”  Oh, that was Tricia.  Frisk sat back - she’d raised herself in the seat as the mutants got closer and closer - and glanced towards her teammate.  “That was some awesome shooting, kids, but we’ll take it from here.”

“How…?”

“They raised the spike wall.  Those things’ll come charging right at it.  Even if they do try to climb, like Sans thought, there’s no way for them to get through.  They’re too big.”

All the tension drained out of her in a breath that was more like a sob.  “R-right.  Okay.”

“C’mon back to us, girl.  You did it.  You got most of ‘em.  Good shooting.  You too, Sans.”

Sans didn’t say anything, but the arm that was extended out relaxed.  It was shaking.  He must’ve been holding it steady for - she looked at the sinking sun - over an hour, maybe closer to two.  Despite the lack of muscles, that had to hurt.  Probably.

“Easy, Frisk.  You did great.  You did really great.  Papyrus, status?”

There was an unholy screeching from down below that answered the question before Papyrus could.  “SOMETHING STRUCK THE SPIKE WALL,” he said.  Two more screams mingled with the first, one after the other.  “THREE, IT SOUNDS LIKE.”

“Well.  Ain’t that just the bee’s knees.  Good job.”

“who else was shooting?”  Sans asked.  “the numbers don’t add up.”

“Rahim and Mad got a few; I guess since Mad ‘sees’ using magic, being a literal rifle, whatever was hiding those things didn’t work as well on him.  You two got most of them, though.”

“heh.  awesome.”

Frisk knew that tone of voice.  That was the sound of a Sans who was about to drift off on her again.  “Hey.  Stay awake, Sans.  We’ve gotta make sure no more of those things show up.”

“She’s right,” Tricia sighed.  “Normally we’d give you a break after such a nice showing, but you’ve had the best luck identifying these things and taking them out.”

“but ‘m tired…”

“Suck it up, buttercup.”

“‘n frisk’s hungry.”

“I’ll get her some-”

“-SPAGHETTI!” screamed Papyrus, producing the glitter-noodles from earlier like a proud parent with a newborn child.

“-something that can be eaten while working.  Tibbs whipped up a batch of hand pies and has been handing them out; I’ll see what I can do.  I’m sure they’re not nearly as...exciting as your spaghetti, Papyrus, but we have to make do.”

Papyrus pouted like a kicked puppy and drifted away into the growing crowd.

The screams subsided before the hand pies appeared, the creatures herded into cages.  There were a number of people Frisk didn’t recognize - mousy and slightly overweight in a way members of the Ebbot Forest Patrol just couldn’t afford to be.

(Well, _most_ of them.  Sans had a definite paunch, but he was also a skeleton.  Who knew how _that_ worked.)

Weird thing was, all those people seemed to know Sans.  And most of them treated him with a deference that seemed too practiced to have come from his admittedly much-improved spotting skills.

So science-types, probably.  But what did they want with…

...With mutants that could turn invisible?  That could possibly scale Haven’s walls?  That had shown a level of cunning and planning that had astonished even _Sans?_

Of course they’d want to study these creatures.  Heck, they’d probably keep them alive.   _Alive!_  And after all the time and effort that normally went into killing those things!

The hand pies mollified her a little.  She’d been handed two: one with some kind of bird meat and raisins in a tangy-honey sauce, and one with Mrs. Tibbs’ signature apple pie filling.  The old lady sure knew how to improve Frisk’s mood.

“that wasn’t half bad,” Sans said once he’d eaten his; then, obviously catching himself, added, “it’s not as good as spaghetti of course, but not bad.”

Papyrus grinned as he walked by, trailing Tricia.

“Of course.”  She tried to sound as sincere as possible, but she’d _seen_ that spaghetti.

Some of her tone must have bled through, despite her efforts.  When Sans spoke, it was in a low, almost growling voice.  “y’know, paps has been really improving in his cooking.”

“I know, I’m sorry-”

“sometime next year, he might actually make something edible.”

Startled, she twisted around as far as she could in her chair.  Sans, perched in the spotter’s seat above and behind her, was looking out over the landscape with a flashing blue-yellow-blue eye.  He didn’t glance down at her, though he must’ve seen her out of his peripheral vision.

Well.  At least he wasn’t _completely_ blind when it came to his brother.

“And here I thought he was the chef of the house.”

“you kiddin’?  i may make “lazy food” like ‘dogs and mac ‘n cheese, but at least i don’t add glitter or explosives or pebbles.”

“Yeah, I imagine that would help.”

He knocked her in the head with his hand, too firmly to be accidental, as she settled back into place to watch for more weird shielded mutants.  Frisk made a mental note to get him back for that later, but she was too happy to protest at the moment.

_See, Chara?  I can make friends._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and comments on this story; your support means a lot to me. Big internet cookies to kawaiiloverq and pierrotsdoll, who specifically requested the next chapter. Hope you both enjoyed!
> 
> I am also over on [Tumblr](https://dragonasheswrites.tumblr.com/), if anyone does the Tumblr thing. The reason I mention this is because I'll be sticking this story up over there later this week (I want to get all of "The Heaven We Didn't Choose" up before I post the next chapter on Wednesday, so it'll probably be Thursday or Friday), then I'll be posting some extras over there. I've had a few people comment on the world of Bullet Hell, and right now I mostly have worldbuilding notes. Not extra stories, at least not yet, but weird little details that haven't yet made it into the story.
> 
> Thanks again, and I'll see you all in the next chapter!


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